C.O. Bigelow
America's oldest apothecary, since 1838.
C.O. Bigelow is the oldest surviving apothecary–pharmacy in the United States, founded in 1838 by Dr. Galen Hunter as the Village Apothecary Shop on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village, New York. Clarence Otis Bigelow took over in the late nineteenth century and gave the shop both its present name and its current building, into which it moved in 1902. The Ginsberg family has owned the business since 1939 and gradually expanded the in-house line of remedies, balms and fragrances into a broader retail brand stocked at Bath & Body Works and other partners. Scents lean toward old-school apothecary registers — barbershop accords, lemon, lavender, mentha, rose salve — presented in plainly labelled flasks. C.O. Bigelow suits wearers who want fragrance with a New York pharmacy lineage rather than a fashion-house gloss.
DNA over time
Each column is an era. Each colored band shows that family’s share of accord weight across every perfume the house released in that window. Bigger band = the house leaned harder on that family.
